Kicking It

1

I woke up in a strange bed in a strange bedroom, and it took me only a few seconds to realize I had no idea where I was.

Or who I was.

Heart thumping, mind skittering, I surveyed the closed, heavy curtains and the blazing lights that I had evidently left on. Round me, paintings of trumpets, saxophones, and clarinets hung on the walls. I kept anticipating the numbness of sleep to wear off, yet . . .

No. So I closed my eyes again, giving myself more time. When that didn’t work, my pulse pounded faster, like feet running over an endless street. I sat up in the bed, covers swaddling me to the hips.

Brain. Surely my brain would kick in any moment.

Yet my head was still a near blank while I inspected myself: fully dressed, in a tight thin-strapped black tank with a skull and crossbones on the front, cutoff jeans shorts. But then I focused on my legs. They felt heavy, encased, as if . . .

I whipped off the covers, then gaped.

A pair of boots—and not any sort of boots I’d seen before now. (As if I even faintly knew what I had seen before now.) These boots came to just below my knees, and they appeared to be made of . . . vines. A dark green mass of attractively entwined strands, wrapping round calves and feet, as if I had just now stepped off nature’s catwalk.

“What the bloody hell?” I whispered, still staring. Was I in an old episode of The Twilight Zone? Wait—how did I know what The Twilight Zone was when I couldn’t even remember anything about how I had gotten here or where I was or what I was doing in these tarty, out-of-the-ordinary boots?

Slowly, one fact caught up to me: I had spoken with an English accent. Somewhat posh. A touch salty, perhaps. And if I knew it was an English accent, that meant I could at least remember something about my world. I knew things, but not important things . . .

I rolled out of the bed. The sheets were clean, tidy. Clearly, I was not a restless sleeper. In fact, it was as if I had slept the slumber of the dead.

For some odd reason, that thought weighed on me as I rushed to the window, yanking aside the curtain to discover that I was on the second floor of a house, dusk pressing down on a view of a street decorated with wrought-iron galleries. Below them, people meandered down sidewalks, some wearing flashy beads under the flickering lanterns and carrying plastic cups. A fence enclosed the yard, and across the way a corner market was boarded up.

I sprang to a nearby desk, grasping at a folder, the golden lettering on the front confirming my growing suspicions.

Hanover House. New Orleans.

I allowed myself to sigh. Here was my explanation, right before me. Today I had most likely gotten rat-arsed on the Hand Grenades and Hurricanes I knew they sold on Bourbon Street, and had stumbled back to my bed-and-breakfast room. I was on holiday, out for a good time. Liquor was the reason I didn’t remember a few pertinent details. Evidently I had destroyed key brain cells.

But then, why didn’t I feel as groggy or booze-bitten as I should have?

Instead of asking myself again the reason I could remember big-picture items such as how it felt to be hungover, I stumbled away from the desk, turning round, looking for a suitcase or a bag or anything else I had brought with me. Even a smartphone that could fill in my blanks. I searched drawers, under the bed, everywhere.

Again . . . nothing, unless you counted the unfurled paper clip on my nightstand.

Panic increasingly chipped at me as I told myself to think. Think hard.

Check your pockets, you git.

I did, but I didn’t have much luck there, either: merely thirty dollars.

The room was closing in on me. Even those boots felt tight. Too tight, as if they were gnawing at my skin. Unable to stand the sensation, I bent to remove them.

But . . . no zipper, no buckles. I attempted to draw the material away from my legs, but it was as if the boots were leeched on.

That couldn’t be. So I tried to wedge them away from me again, dropping to the carpet this time, pulling forcefully at them. My legs tingled, and I could have sworn the boots were a part of my flesh.

Impossible. Absolutely insane.

Resting my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, I told myself not to give in to the anxiety strumming at my nerves. But I had no name, no clue, no idea what to do next.

After a few breaths, I realized the front desk would have my name. What a fuckwit. So I stood, catching sight of myself in a mirror across the room. I was young, mid-twenties, perhaps. Sandy hair that was straight and cut to the shoulders. And my eyes were a clear green color, my nose slightly tilted, my teeth with a bit of an overbite. I looked clean, as if I had recently showered, so I couldn’t have had that rough of a day out on the streets.

At least I didn’t look as insane as I felt. I took a moment to freshen up in the bathroom—the proprietors were kind enough to have toothpaste and other toiletries on hand—then left the room, taking care not to lock the door since I couldn’t find my key.

Just outside my door, I found a middle-aged woman with dark skin and black hair worn short and flipped up at the ends. She sported a print skirt and a white blouse, and carried an armful of those hospitality baskets, as if she were an employee or owner.

At first, her smile welcomed me. But then she glanced at my boots and frowned. When her gaze traveled to the room number on the door, the frown only deepened.

“Hello,” I said, my pulse pounding. I would have wagered she’d never seen me before in her life.

“What’re you doing in that room?” she asked in a thick Southern accent. “It’s unoccupied.”

I recalled the unbent paper clip on the desk. I didn’t have a key at all, did I? I had the feeling that I had picked that lock, showered, then fallen asleep as sweetly as Goldilocks before the Three Bears had come home. Why?

I knew somewhere deep down that I didn’t want this woman to contact any authorities, so I smiled at her, assuring her that I meant no harm. She dropped one of the baskets and clutched at the other one’s handle with both hands, as if to swing it at me.

“Carlos!” she yelled, obviously summoning an employee. “Call 911!”

I bolted toward the staircase, and she wasn’t far behind me.

“Get back here, little girl! What did you steal?”

No time to answer as I easily flew down the steps. Very easily, but that had to be my adrenaline kicking in. I burst through the front door, sprinting out the gate to the street, where people had paused, watching the screaming woman emerging from Hanover House.

“Get back here, you shit!” she yelled.

But she sounded far off in the distance as I gained speed, the sidewalk spinning by under my boots, the buildings a blur as I pumped my arms, going faster, faster, faster—

No time to think about how I was managing to move so rapidly, because I heard a siren ahead. The law already?

I skidded, taking a right turn into an alley. Shadows enveloped me as I slowed, then crouched behind discarded crates, at the rear of a restaurant, judging by the seafood aromas coming from the back door.

As the siren faded into the distance, common sense caught up to me, and now I had a moment to wonder how I had been able to run so quickly. I had been literally zooming along.

I glanced down at the boots.

While I brushed my fingers over them again, they throbbed into my skin, as if they truly were a part of me.

I continued inspecting them while also listening for any sign of trouble round me. Soon enough, I was able to relax, but only somewhat, because I was still wondering how I could start backtracking in order to discover how I came by these boots. More important, I had the sense that they would lead to my identity.

Just as I was settling on which way to go next, a prickle of awareness brought me out of my questions. Someone near. Someone . . . watching?

Staying huddled behind the crates, I held my breath. Then I shivered as a shadow appeared across the alley, on the wall. A shadow that was sitting on top of the crates . . .

And it was aiming what looked to be a weapon at me.

It was as if my body took over, and without another thought, my hand zipped up to the shadow’s wrist. I grasped it, yanking it down from the crate with a strength I hadn’t known I possessed. I didn’t even stop to see who my attacker was as I disarmed it, a Taser clattering over the ground as I targeted a kick at the shadow’s throat.

But my attacker was nearly as fast as I was, and it had dodged, flipped to its feet, crouching, its hands in front of it, ready for another attack.

For a suspended second, I saw its entire black form, its electric-red eyes cutting through the falling night.

I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t, and as I automatically spun round and whipped out my leg to catch it square in the head with my boot, the creature did a back handspring.

Fuck this, said common sense.

I jumped into a sprint, my heart nearly exploding as I zoomed through the alley, took a corner, then began weaving through the drunks on the lantern-lit, karaoke-blaring street, feeling a splash of liquid on my arm when I upset someone’s plastic cup on my way.

What had that been back in the alley? And how could I make certain it didn’t follow me?

Light, I thought. Just head for a light.

I whooshed into the first doorway I could find, slowing down only when I was inside the building and trying to blend in behind what I realized was a rack of herbs and bottles of oils.

My heart was throbbing, my head swimming, my breath chopping when I heard a low, drawling voice behind me.

“Well, cher,” he said. “It’s about time you arrived.”

2

It was as if some sort of power had hold of me. I spun round toward the voice, one of my hands in a bladed position as I slashed at my target.

The man behind me jumped out of the way, as if he had expected my actions. But I wasn’t done. I hopped up and kicked out with my right leg, hitting him in the shoulder. He grunted, and when I followed up with a spinning whirlwind of another kick, he ducked, holding up his hands and laughing.

I settled into a knee-bent stance. He was . . . laughing?

“Whoa,” he said, smiling at me as if he encountered kung-fu psychos every day. “Didn’t mean to frighten you. Just calm down, darlin’.”

My pulse double-timed as he continued raising his hands in peace. He was no shadow attacker; he was definitely just a man. Most definitely. Tall, very tall, with longish black hair that he had pulled into a low ponytail. Gray eyes that burned against the toasty shade of his skin, eyes that pierced me and grinned at me at the same time. A long nose and full lips, broad shoulders and chest. Arms muscled under a black shirt with sleeves rolled up to his biceps. He wore jeans and black boots with silver tips on them and . . .

I stayed in that defensive position as I inspected him even closer. Was there something sticking out of the left side of his waistband, covered by his shirt? A firearm? My gaze traveled back up to his neck, where a leather strap held a pendant—a silver eye that gleamed against his smooth chest where his shirt gaped.

The Eye of Horus, I thought. The all-seeing eye. There went my useless memory again.

He cocked an eyebrow at me and gestured to our surroundings. We were in what looked to be the back room of a touristy voodoo shop, with carved juju masks and magick books on shelves and a ragged table to our right, half concealed behind a purple curtain. No customers round. No red eyes or shadow people to attack me here.

Another niggle tickled the back of my brain—was there something in this shop keeping that red-eyed creature from entering, and that was the reason it hadn’t followed me inside?

“Normally,” the man said, after taking a thorough look at me as well, “I would say that you’ve popped in for a quick reading, but I know better.”

Come again? “What do you know?”

“Quite a bit, except maybe not exactly what you’re searching for.”

I fit a few pieces together: the table to our right, this voodoo shop. “You’re a psychic who works here.”

“Yes.”

No time to waste. “Then—”

“I’m sorry, cher, but I can’t tell you your name.”

His statement was jarringly spot-on, and in more than a psychic way. Something tightened in my throat at this dead end, but I knew that I never cried. So I didn’t. “Then what might you tell me?”

He gestured toward the half-curtained table, inviting me to sit.

I shook my head. “I don’t have very much money.” Besides, New Orleans was full of shams, and he could very well be one. Everyone, even someone as clueless as I, knew that.

Yet something had been chasing me outside, so perhaps a short stay in here wouldn’t be amiss—only until I collected myself and decided what to do next. Wasn’t there a possibility, though, that if this man were a true seer, he might be able to aid me in discovering all that was lost to me? He knew I didn’t know my name, after all.

“The few dollars you might have on you mean nothing to me,” he said, looking me up and down again. He dwelled on my saucy boots before he sent his gaze back up my body, a slow, wicked grin claiming his mouth. “There are other ways to pay.”

I almost planted a boot in his face.

He was already laughing. “No. That’s not what I was saying.”

“It better not have been.”

He bowed slightly at the waist. “My name is Philippe Angier, and, as I mentioned, I have been expecting you.”

Should I trust him? This was a mystical city, full of twists and turns, so perhaps he could help. Also, he wasn’t awful to gaze at, so I decided to go with my better instincts and accept his hospitality.

He drew the rest of the curtain aside for me, pulled out a chair, and fixed the fabric so that it would block out the rest of the room.

“No,” I said, gripping his wrist, just as I had done with my attacker earlier. “I don’t want any surprises to creep up on me.”

He tilted his head, giving a long glance to his wrist, grinning that grin. I realized that I was still holding on to him when it wasn’t necessary. With my fingers burning, I disconnected from him and sat, but I did it sideways, in such a way that I could monitor the entrance to this rear room. I also managed to scoot the chair so my back was to a wall.

Leaving the curtain open, he sauntered to his seat. “Still on guard, are you? If you hear anything out front, I have an assistant working the counter there, so . . .”

“Don’t fret. I’ll spare her the karate chops.”

He gave me an entertained, touché nod, not at all fazed by my sharp tongue or my sudden appearance.

“You said you were expecting me,” I said, testing him. “Why?”

“A precognitive vision.”

“Really.”

He leaned back in his chair, surveying me again with that gray gaze. Lovely bumps crept up my arms.

“My visions are very real,” he finally said. “In this particular one, I saw that someday soon I would find a . . . different . . . sort of customer hiding near the love potions and herbs. I had time to come to terms with you.”

“Any con man would claim that.” But again, he had known that I didn’t have an identity.

“What if I told you,” he said, “that I sense these clothes you’re wearing are not your type?”

I glanced at the skull-and-crossbones tank, the cutoffs. The boots.

He laughed. “You had a sort of uniform you always wore . . .” His expression changed, from amusement to something serious. “You’ve come so close to death, more than once.”

I didn’t answer, but I thought of the red eyes outside. Had that been one of my near-death experiences?

He was still being vague, but then he narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re so alone in this world. No one to turn to, no one to go home to.”

It was as if he had punched me square in the gut. “I wouldn’t know.”

He leaned toward me, lowering his voice. “Do you trust me to tell you even more?”

No. Yet I wished to hear what he had to say, more than anything. I didn’t have many other options.

Resting his hand on the table—my, he had nice long fingers, didn’t he?—he turned it palm upward. “May I?” He gestured toward my hand.

Psychometry. Some psychics could get readings off objects or biotic things such as skin or hair. I knew that, too, as if it had been a normal part of my life at some time. I was getting the feeling that far stranger things had been a part of my existence as well.

I placed my hand in his, trying not to think about goose bumps or shivers. Trying not to think of how warm his grip was as he closed his fingers over mine.

A few seconds later, he took in a sharp breath.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Today,” he said, “you woke up just as alone as you have been for a while now, cher. In a room you didn’t recognize. You don’t know how you came to be there.”

His gaze softened. Pity. I recognized that well enough, though I suspected I had little tolerance for it.

“And . . . ?” I asked.

“And those boots you wear. They’re especially unfamiliar to you. They make you feel . . .” He seemed to search for words, then only came up with, “Powerful. Is that it?”

I nodded slightly, still reluctant to give too much of myself away.

He gripped my hand harder. “You come from so much darkness. That’s clear.”

“How so?”

“I can’t say for sure, but I see . . .” As he paused, his gaze unnerved me. “Fire. An explosion. Pain. Then, it’s as if . . .”

I must have squeezed his hand this time.

“I’m getting a symbolic reading, so you’ll have to interpret the images.” He furrowed his dark brow. “It’s as if you were shut into a coffin—one made of glass. Then you were freed, but there was still containment. Does any of that make sense?”

Not literally. But I felt contained right now by being shut out of the information we all take for granted—information we normally wake up knowing every morning.

“There’s even more fire after the coffin imagery,” he added. “But this time the flames nearly devour you.”

Now I was shaking my head. I couldn’t have lived the life he was describing on a realistic level. So what did it all mean?

He ran a thumb over mine. Comforting me?

Comfort. It might have been the first thing—or last—that I needed at this moment. But before I pulled my hand out of his, he looked grim, as if he had received one more vision.

“You’ve had an interesting night so far.”

“You’re referring to the ‘it’ that was chasing me earlier?”

“I wish I knew what it was. But I saw the burning eyes . . . the black shape. I think you don’t need me to tell you that it was dangerous.”

“Any hints about how to avoid it in the future?”

He nodded toward the shop in front. “Indeed, I know people who can help.”

“But I can’t pay you for any protection items or spells, remember?”

His smile was slight. “You didn’t run in here for the fun of it. And for me to deny you help would be terrible karma. Besides, it’s a slow night, even for March. I’ve been bored until now, cher.”

What was he saying? That he had assumed the mantle of white knight for a random damsel in distress?

I was torn. I had the feeling I could take care of myself very well, thank you, under normal circumstances, but someone was after me out there, in the night. I would be foolish to refuse help from the only savior available.

He pushed back from the table and came round to my side. “May I?” he asked, motioning to my boots.

Why not? I stretched out a leg as he bent down, and I tried like mad to keep those white-knight thoughts from crowding my head. When he ran his fingers over the viny texture of the boot, I restrained a quiver. It was as if I could feel his touch, even through whatever material these boots were made of.

“I’ve never seen anything like these,” he said. “And I get nothing on where you purchased them.”

I frowned at the word “purchased,” and I wasn’t sure why. Instinct again? But if it was instinct, it wasn’t a good one. I had broken into a bed-and-breakfast already. Had I also shoplifted these clothes and boots?

When Philippe smoothed a hand up the back of my calf, further exploring, I went tight between the legs. I almost shifted in my chair. And when he slid a finger into the top of my boot, brushing skin, I jerked away from him.

His gaze was fascinated now. “It’s as if they . . .”

“Are attached to me? I know. I tried to strip them off.”

“They wouldn’t budge?”

“Right.” Then a gobsmacking thought hit me. If these boots were as odd as I believed they were, was it possible that they had led me into this voodoo shop on purpose? Were they voodoo items?

I could tell Philippe was thinking the same. “You ran in here like you were part of the wind, and the way you fight, my darlin’? Are you sure these ain’t superhero boots?”

Gob. Smacked. “I’m not certain of anything.”

He stood, his hands on his lean hips, considering. Behind him and to the left, in another room where a curtain was pulled back from the entrance, a shelf of jujus and gris-gris and dolls stood, timeless, as if knowing the answers that we did not.

“These boots could be the work from an old, powerful woman in the area,” he finally said. “They call her Amari.”

“So I should see her.”

“I would say an unqualified yes, except for . . .” He looked at my boots. “They say Amari doesn’t sell any charmed objects.”

At that point, I concentrated only on the “charmed” part. “You think these boots are enchanted? That’s the reason they won’t bloody come off me?”

“I do get that feeling. But you have a bigger worry than that.”

Back to the “sell” word he had used. “If this Amari doesn’t offer charmed objects for sale, then how did I end up with the boots?”

What had I been up to? And, damn it all, was it possible that the red-eyed creature was trying to fetch the boots back for Amari?

Splendid.

“Is there a chance,” I asked, “that there’s another witch round here who sells clingy boots that make a girl run like the wind and sting like a bee?”

As Philippe turned the question over in his mind, I saw something in the room behind him, through the spaces of the shelves between the jujus and dolls.

Eyes. Red eyes.

He must have noticed my widened gaze, and he turned round. But I jumped out of the chair, my body taking over again, as if my mind had no say. I dove for what I thought was the gun in his waistband.

Yet he was no fool—he’d already drawn the weapon, firing at the shelf, wood and cloth flying every which way. A scream came from the front of the shop.

The red eyes disappeared. I felt Philippe’s hand on my arm just as I was about to dart away.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

Trust him? Sounded good at the moment. “Sure. Why not.”

We made a break for the front door, his coworker peeking over the sales counter as we ran outside and he pulled me toward the edge of the sidewalk, where a motorcycle sat dormant. He hopped on, reaching in his pocket for a set of keys, then revved up the bike. I had already jumped on the back of the seat, my arm round his waist.

Shoving the revolver into my hand, he didn’t say a word as we took off into the night and I glanced over my shoulder, swearing that a pair of red eyes was fading into nothing on top of the shop’s roof as we roared away.

3

We rode until the city lights gave way to cypress trees dripping with Spanish moss as we veered off the main roads and found the side ones. Full night made everything eerie while Philippe the karmically proper psychic steered me into the middle of nowhere.

My wariness of him was still alive and kicking, but the man had given me his firearm. He had lent me the means to kill him, and that did wonders for my so-called trust.

Yet even if I hadn’t held that revolver, I had my boots. Just how much of a lethal weapon was I, myself?

We went deep into where the bayous ran, and he slowed the bike as we turned onto a slim road that paralleled the duckweed-thickened water. I didn’t want to think about what might lurk under the surface. Night creatures sounded off with chirping and croaking and clicks as a lone light came into view.

It belonged to a lantern from a planked cabin with a tin roof. When we pulled up to the stairs leading to the porch, I saw a rickety swing hanging from the eaves and a screen door that angled halfway off its hinges. Philippe cut the engine, but I didn’t dismount. All my inner alarms were screaming.

I held on to that revolver as he waited for me to alight. He hadn’t worn a helmet—neither of us had taken the time to don one—so his dark hair was disheveled, its long, loose strands roguish. He looked like a pirate who hid out here in the backwater.

“This is where the witch lives,” he said in his lazy accent as we both merely sat there, staring at the cabin.

“How do you know?” I wished he’d had the time to explain more about her to me before we had fled the shop.

“Rumors. And a vibe.”

I realized that he might be more than a psychic. “Are you also a voodoo practitioner?”

He laughed. “No. I only rent space in the shop for readings. But I’m well acquainted with everything in it. I haven’t been there long—only a few weeks—but I’m learning more every night.”

“What did you do before this?”

“Curious, aren’t we?”

“You don’t have to answer.” We needed to be getting on with this, anyway.

But it seemed Philippe liked my keen interest. “I was a carpenter. Still am, although business is slow. I’ve always had the seeing gift, just as my maman did, and I make use of it on the side for her sake.”

From the manner in which he said this, I wondered if his mother was sick or destitute. My heart beat an extra time.

He must have seen I was sympathetic because he brushed off what he had said. “My senses have been sharp lately, and that’s probably why, a week ago, I had the vision of you.”

“It’s fortunate you were prepared. I can’t say the same for myself.”

I finally stepped off the bike, and he put down the kickstand, then dismounted as well.

“So let’s find a way to get these boots off,” he said.

I prepared every apology I could think of, in case I had stolen the items. This was the best course of action, I kept telling myself. If Amari had sent an employee out to reclaim the enchanted boots, I was better off facing the music here and taking my chances.

“I hope we don’t need an appointment,” I said.

Philippe merely gave me a look, and I shrugged. Maybe I was a polite sort in real life.

Our footsteps echoed on the stairs, then the porch, and my boots tightened round my legs. Clinging, as if they wished to hold on to me and me alone.

I opened the broken screen, then knocked on the door. When no one answered, I knocked again.

“Nobody is home,” he said assuredly.

“How can you be . . . ?” I didn’t finish the question. “All right. So what do we do now?”

Philippe reached round me and opened the door, which was so warped that it took a shove from him. He sent me a smug glance.

I tried not to dwell on how he smelled of cedar or perhaps pine as he brushed past me. Either way, yum.

I walked inside after he did, glancing round. Dark, with only the slim lights coming through the slats of the shutters.

Reaching back toward the wall, I groped for a switch. When I flipped it on, it didn’t work. Chills fingered up my spine as I backed up to the wall, wanting to feel it behind me in the near darkness. I continued scanning the room, my eyesight adjusting. Meanwhile, I held up Philippe’s revolver, evidently knowing just how to use it, comfortable with it in my grip.

Boot steps thudded as Philippe moved toward the window. There was a sharp sound as he pulled the shutter cords, and the room lit slightly more with wan moonlight.

It allowed me to lock onto a form across the room that was draped by a sheet. I nearly squeezed the revolver’s trigger until I concluded that, based on the shape and the exposed gilding on one side, what I was seeing was a covered standing mirror. Another look round showed a second shrouded frame above a fireplace. When Philippe got to it and peered beneath the linen, he spoke.

“Someone doesn’t like looking glasses.”

And that wasn’t the only disturbing element in this small cabin. As I surveyed the area—the simple kitchen in the corner, neat as a pin; the cot on the other side of the room—I saw a table near me.

A table with bones spread over it.

My boots reacted sharply, like the ends of vines digging into me. I gasped, flinching as a sudden memory grabbed me: a woman’s voice saying, “There is a cost for these.” Then the feel of the boots sliding up my legs as someone put them on me . . .

I jerked out of the memory, and my skin . . . It felt as if it were puckered. Yet when I ran my free hand over my arm, my flesh was as smooth as always.

I wasn’t certain what I had just experienced, but I knew for a fact now that there had been some sort of cost for the boots, and if I had remembered this little nugget of information because I was inside this cabin, the price was no doubt still to be paid to Amari.

Had their powers lent me the speed and strength to run from the witch before I’d paid for them? Why couldn’t I remember?

Sliding down the wall to the floor, I pulled at the boots again, wanting them off. Now.

“What’re you doin’?” Philippe asked, coming to me.

“Trying again,” I said. “If she’s not here, then at least I hope the boots will be when she returns. I think that’s why I was led to you, by fate, by a spell Amari cast, or . . . I don’t know. The boots belong here. When I caught sight of those bones on the table, the boots responded, and I had a flash of memory. Someone told me there was a price for these, and I don’t think I paid it.”

Philippe blew out a breath, then ambled over to the table and reached for a bone. When he made contact with one of them, he froze.

“Philippe?” My voice seemed to echo in the cabin until his took over.

“Liberatio,” he said.

My boots shifted on my legs, as if restless.

“Say it again,” I whispered, my breath quickening. He’d felt a psychic vibe from the bone.

Louder now. “Liberatio!”

My legs jerked. Or, rather, the boots did. At a sensation of release, a loosening, I pressed my advantage, sticking my hand between my calf and the vines, pulling them away from my skin. When the boot gave, I dropped the revolver, using both hands.

“It’s working!”

He came to a knee next to me, pulling at my other boot. And when he uttered the word again, we managed to yank both of them off.

Freedom!

We leaned back against the wall, laughing. I had the urge to hug him or kiss him or . . . Whatever it was, I didn’t do it.

I said, “Those bones . . .”

“From animals. Amari must’ve used them for the spell that she put on the boots.”

I kept laughing. Now the witch could have her property, and I would get that red-eyed creature off my trail. That would leave me free to discover the rest of my puzzling life.

Dropping a boot on the floor, I said, “Who needs to run that fast or be Jackie Chan, anyway?”

Philippe’s laughter faded. “Yes. Who needs that?”

The way he looked at me now wasn’t with amusement, or with a pirate’s gleam in his moonlit eyes. He was serious about something I didn’t quite understand.

“I think,” he said, “it’s time we left, cher.”

Why did it sound as if he had been waiting to say that ever since I had run into his shop?

I didn’t have the opportunity to answer, because my skin . . . It had begun to do something strange.

Shriveling. Puckering.

I lifted my hand. In the moonlight, I could see my flesh changing before my eyes, as if it were . . . scarred from burns?

A scream welled up within me as the female voice in my memory returned. There is a cost for these . . .

What cost had she been referring to?

My instincts shuddered, telling me to put the boots on again. When I reached for them, Philippe intercepted me.

“Forgive me, darlin’, but I did mean it when I said that I don’t need you to be Jackie Chan.”

As the skin all over my body—my face, my neck, my legs—pruned and ached, he gripped my wrists with one hand and quickly picked up the revolver I had put down with the other. He aimed at me.

“I had to get those boots off you,” he said, “because when I started being honest with you, I couldn’t have you running so fast away from me that I wouldn’t be able to catch up. I didn’t need you to fight me with the strength those boots clearly give you, either. That’s why I brought you here.”

I felt like a mummy without its bandages by now, and tears clouded my sight. The boots—they hadn’t only given me strength and speed. They had kept me from this—scars from the fire Philippe had seen. He hadn’t been lying about what he had divined when he had touched me earlier. The evidence was obvious on me now.

“You’ve probably guessed already,” Philippe said, letting go of me and standing, “that there was more to my vision than you running into my shop, Lilly.”

The sound of my name washed over me like acid, burning from the inside out. I was withered, wounded, betrayed.

I was Lilly.

He kept waiting for me to take his hand. “Come along with me now. I won’t hurt you, cher. I promise.”

“What will you do with me?”

“Take you back to your family. I saw that they are searching for you, offering money I can use for my maman’s health. We’ll both be much better off afterward.”

“My . . . family?” Why did the word leave a bad taste in my mouth?

He merely watched me, as if his vision hadn’t told him any other details about my parents, or siblings I might have.

There was a different burning inside me now. A heat. A hatred. And it wasn’t directed at Philippe.

Deep down, where nothing made sense, I knew I couldn’t return to my family. Not at any cost.

“Lilly,” he said, “you’ve made good with the witch. If Amari was the one who sent that red-eyed thing after you tonight, then you’re in the clear. We can leave, and I will take you to safety, where people know you.”

I felt the burning again, but this time I saw fire. Felt fire even as my skin began to wither. Smelled the smoke choking me, looked into a pair of eyes that were so like mine as flames consumed me.

Had my family done this to me?

With a yell of rebellion, I kicked, sweeping my leg under Philippe so swiftly that he didn’t have time to react. He fell to the floor, the revolver skidding away from him. Even without the boots, I was on him in a lightning flash, using a wrestling hold to pin his legs with mine, my arms threaded with his so he couldn’t move.

In the dimness, I could see his stunned expression, but he was laughing softly. “Seems you don’t need those boots. I didn’t see that comin’.”

He used all his power to kick me off him, but I sprang back at him, wrapping an arm round his neck, using my other hand to pinch him between the shoulder and neck in a spot that made him slump.

“Well . . . played . . . cher . . . ,” he whispered as he passed out, tumbling the rest of the way to the floor and taking me with him.

I didn’t move for a moment. I wanted to make sure he was down. And he was.

My pulse steady, I took my hand from his sweet spot, but I didn’t roll away from him. I stole a moment, feeling his muscled back against my chest, smelling his carpenter’s wood-chip scent, wishing . . .

For what?

I pushed away, knowing in my core that I didn’t love. I wasn’t certain I could, although there I was, still looking at him, my head tilted, when I heard someone come in through the front door behind me.

“Oh, Lilly,” said the female voice from my memory. “What’ve you done this time?”

4

The witch was framed by the door, backlit by the porch lantern. She held on to either side of the opening, dressed in a beige robe with a sash round the middle. Long, frizzy red hair framed a face that was covered by a cloth that tied behind her head, covering her eyes. There were two subtle dark circles on the white linen, ghosts of where a gaze would be.

From behind the witch, a teen girl with dark braids hanging over her shoulders ducked under Amari’s arm. She guided the woman inside the rest of the way, then went outside, apparently leaving.

“Get them boots back on,” the witch finally said to me with a backwoods drawl. Amari had a young voice. Was it because she led a charmed life? Or was she as young as she sounded?

Marveling that the witch hadn’t commented on Philippe, who was still lying prone on the floor, I obeyed her. As soon as I slipped the boots over my legs, they leeched to me, coming home, it seemed. I sighed as I felt all my skin moisten, unwithering, returning to normal just like that.

“Can’t even make a house call without havin’ to come back to this shit,” Amari said with a head shake. “I knew you’d be a challenge. Warned you over and over again ’bout how them boots work, but you’re full of yourself. I’m hopin’ you finally learned somethin’, though, since you’re back here again like a tamed pup.”

Back here again?

She moved farther into the room, and I stood, intending to act as a guide, just as the young girl had done before she’d left.

The witch waved me off. “I know my way ’round my own digs. Besides, I have Jean-Marie to wait on me most times, though she’s left for the night. It’s part of her tutorin’. And I wish I didn’t have to explain that to you every time you slink back here.”

“I’ve been here before?”

“Well, you don’t often bring amours with you.” Amari gestured toward Philippe.

“Yes, about him . . .”

“He’ll be out for a while, judgin’ on what I know you can do with those skills of yours.”

Could she see, in spite of that blindfold, with some sort of witch vision?

She sat in a chair behind the animal-bone table, then gestured for me to take the one opposite. Reaching under the table, she came out with a small crystal ball, setting it down, gesturing for me to touch it. The moment I did so, the boots hugged my feet, not violently but with comfort.

“You haven’t been here for two days, Lilly. I was worried.”

Clearly, she hadn’t begun to divine me with that ball, or whatever she had planned. “I wish I could tell you what was occupying me. I woke up in a small hotel at dusk, not knowing where I was.”

“Nothing new there.”

Was I ever going to find out the reason?

Amari clucked, and I noticed that her mouth was lovely: red lips tipped up at the corners. A chin with a dimple.

“Child,” she said, “I don’t envy you, but them boots were the only solution when I found you out by the road a week ago.”

A week ago? When Philippe had that vision of me?

“You’d just come into town,” Amari said. “Stole some poor soul’s pickup on your way here from Lord knows where else. Some time ago—you’d lost track ’bout how long it was, I guess—you were in Southern California.” Cal-ee-fornia.

“What was I doing there?”

“If you’d write all this down in a journal, like I tell you to, I wouldn’t have to explain. You been dependin’ on me to always catch you up, but you’ll be doin’ some writin’ tonight, like it or not. Next time you come here, you’ll be readin’ that instead of listenin’.”

I almost told her that it’s hard to read without any lights in here, but I could always go to the porch, yes? I had high doubts that one argued with Amari.

Those blindfolded eyes seemed to look into mine. “I’ll tell you once more and once only. Burnt to a pitted mess, you were, but somehow you were alive and kickin’. Later, after I divined you, I found out why that was.”

“And?”

“Oh, I’m not going through that complicated story again. A woman gets tired, you know.”

Amari gripped the top of the ball, and I knew that I would be experiencing my tale through it.

But the witch wasn’t ready to give it over to me just yet.

“Your truck had run outta gas down the road,” Amari said. “You’d crawled the rest of the way here, ’cuz somewhere along the line, you’d heard that there was a witch outside New Orleans who healed folk. You were so wounded you’d almost run outta gas, too.”

“So you helped me?”

“That’s what I was born to do. Help, not hinder.”

My chest constricted. I wasn’t getting the sense that I had known people like this back “home.”

“The boots,” I said softly. “You used magic and healing to create those boots, and when I put them on, the burns . . .”

“Go away. When you take ’em off, you go back to bein’ burnt. Nature heals, Lilly. We’re all a part of it. We’ve only just forgotten.”

The boots . . . vines from the bayou. An enchantment from a white witch.

“I remembered something when I arrived here,” I said. “You had told me that there’s a price for these boots. I thought you meant money. I even believed that I might have stolen them from you.” I touched one boot, gently. It seemed to respond, pulsing under my fingers.

“Oh, they’s a price,” Amari said, laughing. And it was a nice laugh. A song, just like the ones the night creatures were singing outside. “You woke up without a memory tonight. Every night.”

I didn’t react.

Amari sighed. “That’s the price them boots demand. Nature, or them vines, give to you, Lilly. It give you health and healing, but it need to take, too, and every mornin’ them boots get spent, and they need your help to revitalize, just as you need them.”

“We’re both . . . parasites?” Living off each other?

“That’s a fair notion. When they take from you, they don’t drain you in the physical way. They take somethin’ stronger—from your soul. Some of your essence, your being.”

“My identity.”

“And your short-term memory. But like all livin’ things, they ain’t perfect. They leave specks of memory for you to cling to sometime.”

Like the instincts I had about what I was capable of doing. And they left me muscle memory, too, based on the martial arts I’d performed tonight.

I tried to bring everything together: I had no doubt been out and about last night, perhaps even the nights before, chasing my identity. When the sun had come up, my boots had needed sustenance, and I had broken in to the bed-and-breakfast to collapse. Until I woke up again, drained.

“I go through this every twenty-four hours?” I asked.

“That’s your curse. And your blessing. It’d be up to you to see what you’re eventually gonna make of it.”

“What do you mean?”

Amari smiled. “You’re about to see.”

With that, she bent her head to the crystal and my eyesight went black, plunging me into an emerging pool of visions so vivid that my adrenaline surged.

A foggy memory of a dark control room with a console . . . watching screens . . . An image of a fanged dragon, destroyed . . . heart breaking, a scream pulled from my lungs as I sank to the floor . . . An explosion, burning me as I crawled away from the destruction, still alive . . .

Then, staring up at a ceiling from a bed, bandages over my face except for my eyes. “You’re retired,” said a man, my father, as he fit a spindly device over my head and my mind went blank.

Coming awake again, this time by the hand of a woman who looked very much like me. A cousin? Doing her bidding, fighting for control of my body, winning, then losing . . . Then burning in another fire, not from an explosion, but a bonfire, punishment for failing the family, more screams as I ran and ran from the flames, rolling on the ground to put out the fire on my skin, near death . . .

Real life swirled in front of me again, and I realized that Amari had let go of the crystal ball. Her voice soothed me to calm.

“You were ramblin’ away on the night I found you, before I made them boots. How you used to be a keeper of a vampire called the dragon, how he died under your watch after some hunters blew up his underground home. You blathered about bein’ ‘retired’ by your family because you’d disappointed ’em so, and from what I guess, retirement was like death, a livin’ coffin.”

I remembered how Philippe had read me earlier, and mentioned a glass coffin.

I tried not to glance at where he lay on the floor, but I couldn’t stop myself. Philippe, who had helped me, but merely because I was a means for him to get reward money for his own family. A noble cause, to be sure, but one that conflicted with mine.

“My family did that to me?” I asked.

“And worse. From what I heard from you, they call themselves the Meratoliages, and they swore in ancient times to protect the dragon’s line of vampires. Not so long ago, they raised you from that retirement to go after the hunters who slayed him. They know the dark arts, and they were able to control you as a revenant. You didn’t take too kindly to that, and you burnt again. I believe, though, it was a sight better than that retirement of yours. Just judgin’ by what you said. I’d rather burn than be buried alive, myself.”

Now that she was telling me, it all seemed so very familiar. “Did your boots heal my mind, too? It sounds as if I didn’t have much of one when I was brought out of this retirement.”

Amari nodded, hands folded on the table again. “But there’s one thing them boots didn’t give you.”

“Powers,” I said. “I had them all along.”

“And they kept you alive tonight.”

Yes. Proof of that was on the floor, not five feet away from me.

I explained how Philippe had a vision of me. “He must have also divined that my family is looking for me. He said they were offering money.” I paused, my eyes widening. “There was a . . . thing. Earlier tonight. Dressed all in black, with red eyes. You didn’t send it after me?”

“No.” For the first time, Amari sounded troubled.

My boots thudded, shuddering through me, and another memory stirred: my old uniform as dragon keeper—all black, masked, with night-vision goggles. Red eyes.

My hunter was a member of my family?

I sat back in my chair. “Is it possible that the Meratoliages have sent someone after me themselves?” And was it also possible that the reason my attacker hadn’t come into Philippe’s shop was because Philippe had asked one of his voodoo friends to protect the area from anyone else who might want to turn me in? His psychic visions would have given him ample time to make such a preparation.

“Either you been runnin’ from your family for a few nights now,” Amari said, “or they just found out where you is. Either way, you best get your shit together before more hunters come for you. I can whip up a protection spell now that I know who’s chasin’ you, but if Philippe is right about there bein’ money offered for you . . .”

“A spell might not help.” I swallowed. “You’re not interested in a bounty?”

“Why would I be when I already live in paradise?” she asked, gesturing round the room.

I wanted to laugh, but stayed silent instead. Outside, a bayou symphony played in the dark, creatures out there swimming in the water, brushing against vines like the ones that had given me a second chance.

This was it, then. I had to make the right decisions tonight, before the family caught up to me. Meeting Philippe had changed my patterns, changed everything.

“Don’t worry,” I told Amari. “I intend to take care of my business before dawn.”

The witch reached under the table once again, then handed me a knife with a long, gleaming blade, almost as if she had already seen that I would be needing it very, very soon.

5

Amari put the protection spell on me before I walked down the road, just to set a bit of distance between her cabin and what I knew would be tracking me down before too long.

In addition to Amari’s knife, I had taken Philippe’s revolver with me as insurance. Since I had tested my powers out only tonight, a firearm felt right in my hands. I had the feeling I was capable of much more than wrestling a strong man into submission or putting that red-eyed attacker back on its heels, but this was no time to get cocky.

After I settled into a crouch on the side of the moon-washed road, my back to one of the trees that clawed over me with branches and Spanish moss, I wasn’t certain how long I waited. But it was a while, because the sky was paling now, and my boots were tapping at me, as if counting down to the time when they would take over, shutting my body down so they could take their nourishment from me.

Yet I had told Amari that I wouldn’t be returning until my hunter had come to me or I needed a bed to slump in.

As I waited, I tried to think of the reasons I might have had for leaving Amari’s cabin and striking out for the city the previous nights. Had one of my unfiltered memories come back to me, prompting me to pursue my family before they reached me? Had I remembered that they would come to wherever I was and I wanted to get to them first, before I forgot again?

Any way about it, the boots had a price, and I would gladly pay it, not only because of the burns that returned whenever I removed the boots, but because I feared I would be a nearly mindless revenant again, just as I had been before Amari had saved me . . .

As the bayou sounds halted for a moment, chills rolled over me. My boots clutched at my legs, and I kept to my crouch, surveying the road, looking to the darkness beyond the trees to see if my attacker was near.

I should have known how this hunter operated, though, and when I slowly looked above me to the bole of the oak I was leaning against, I saw those red night-vision eyes against a black mask.

It had slid down the trunk to get to me, and it was aiming a Taser again.

Before I could think about what sort of balance and stealth that had taken, my body blipped into action: I raised the revolver, shooting to kill. But the hunter was faster. The thing dodged the bullet, yet not all the way—it clipped the Taser, sending the stunner flying once more.

When the hunter used a hand to clamp onto my arm and then flipped me to my back, the breath blasted out of my lungs, my sight scrambling. All I knew was that I’d let go of the revolver, and I had only the long knife that Amari had given to me.

I went for my side, where the blade was hanging in a sheath from my belt loop, but again, the hunter anticipated me, stepping on my arm.

It spoke in an electronically altered voice. “Don’t fight, Lilly. The Meratoliages have been searching for you quite a long time. Just come along.”

An accent like mine. “Are you one of the family?”

A tight laugh. “There are more of us all the time. We’ve had to activate candidates we would have never considered before you brought the family to its knees.” It paused. “All we want, Lilly, is to have you with us again.”

“So you can put me to death.” I remembered the bonfire, the flames licking at me, the eyes of my family leader as she watched.

“No,” the hunter said. “If that was what we had in store for you, I would not have brought Tasers.”

I was still dwelling on the “in store for you” portion. Perhaps fighting wasn’t my best option at the moment. “If I went with you, what would happen?”

The hunter shook its head, as if it were telling me that it wouldn’t divulge that information. And as if it pitied me as well.

The pity rankled, and my boots dug into my flesh. A memory stirred, restless, wanting to bloom.

Were the boots trying to help me access a helpful memory? Were they giving up a bit of themselves for me?

I grasped part of the memory. A videotape I had found as a young girl. Meratoliages, gathered round a table, where a dead member of my family lay, his chest open as they prodded and poked . . .

The truth struck me—my family wished to see if I had deformities? They had given up on me and wanted to learn from my mistakes, so that they would never be repeated in another member as they pursued their dark arts and tried to raise the dragon to life again.

But I wanted to live, even if it was merely night by night.

I called upon my muscle memory to save me, swinging my body so that I somehow got one of my legs over one of the hunter’s, my other leg between its legs. Then I scissored, bringing the thing down with an electronic grunt of surprise.

It didn’t take long for it to hop to a crouch, yet I was already in one, my knife in hand.

Unfortunately, it had accessed nunchakus, and as it spun them and swung them over one shoulder and grasped the bottom handle in preparation to knock me out, I braced myself to duck—

A shot rang out, and the next thing I knew, blood slapped my chest and face, and one of the attacker’s arms was missing.

I dove to the ground as the hunter’s electric scream overrode all the night sounds. When I looked up again, it was writhing on the ground, clutching what was left of its arm.

I looked over to see Philippe with a shotgun still aimed at the hunter.

Amari, I thought. Was she okay?

He stalked forward, slowly and methodically, talking to me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. What did you do to Amari?”

“Only borrowed this baby from her. Maybe tied her up and gagged her, too, so she can’t make any spells that might’ve stopped me. But she’s fine. Me, too. Thanks for asking.”

The hunter was groaning, and I was shocked to see that it was still trying to grasp for the nunchakus it had dropped on the ground.

Automatically, I flung my knife at it, and the blade stuck into its neck. Dead shot.

It stopped all movement, but next thing I knew, Philippe had put the shotgun on me. I smiled at him, hardly surprised. Money was money.

“How did you—?” I started.

“Wake up and grab her shotgun without her seeing? Cher, I played possum for as long as I could. I waited and waited until after Amari rolled me to the side of the floor and then went about fixing some dinner. Or maybe the witch knew I was destined to get away and she didn’t bother to fight fate.”

But there was another option—what if Philippe was part of my protection spell and that was the reason Amari hadn’t stopped him?

“What are you destined to do now?” I asked him. “Take me with you so you can collect the reward money from the Meratoliages?”

He didn’t say anything. I realized at that moment that Philippe Angier needed the money for his family, but he wasn’t a true-born mercenary.

“If you bring me to them,” I said, “they’re going to kill me. They’re going to tear me apart to see why I didn’t work.”

“That money could help my maman for the rest of her life.”

“I understand.” I saw the revolver not three feet from me.

“You don’t understand, Lilly. You—”

Just as I was about to spring for the revolver, his shotgun went off again. But he hadn’t aimed at me.

When I looked behind me, I saw the hunter sprawled on its back, a hole in its chest. We Meratoliages don’t stop, I thought, but Philippe had certainly put a halt to this one.

Just to make certain of that, I stood, went to it, and peeled off its night-vision goggles and its mask. A fall of sandy hair, just like mine, spilled to the ground. She even looked a bit like me.

I dug under her black turtleneck, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. I turned to him. “I suppose I should thank you, but I suspect you were only clearing the way to the money for yourself. You saw in your vision where the Meratoliages are?”

“Yes. And I would’ve taken you to them right away, except I thought those boots were giving you more powers than a human should have. But it wasn’t the boots at all.”

“No,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t.”

Even though he had the shotgun trained on me now, I wasn’t about to go with him. I threw caution to the winds and called on my muscle memory to get me through this.

I made a low run at him, as if I were going to tackle his legs, but instead I sprang, jarring the shotgun up. He didn’t fire it as the weapon flew out of his grip, and as I spun and kicked up, my boot thudded against his head. He crashed to the ground. I pinned him as I’d done before.

All he did was smile, yet it was a sad one. “The Meratoliages won’t stop. There’ll always be someone coming after you.”

I could see his face more clearly, now that dawn was threatening. Beautiful gray eyes and a mouth that looked . . .

I don’t know the reason I did it—I wondered whether I often gave in to impulse—but I bent down, pressing my lips to his. Warm, soft. My boots seemed to twine round themselves even more, as if hugging themselves. I felt the same sensation in my belly until I pulled away.

We locked gazes, and in that endless second, I knew that he was too good to trade me in for money.

“You walk away,” I said. “Hitch a ride to the main road. If you stay away from me, you might even get your bike back someday.”

“I’d better.” His voice was a whisper, as if he’d been affected by the kiss. But when he assumed that arrogant smile, I knew he would never say it aloud. “You’re a real survivor, Lilly.”

“You remember that.”

I wasted no time before pushing myself off him and grabbing the shotgun, plus the revolver. I even went to pull my knife out of the Meratoliage, thinking that I would ask Amari’s student to quickly come here and fetch the body before the animals got to it so the witch could put a stay-dead-forever spell on it, just in case. I didn’t think I had the time to drag it back before the dawn—and the boots—took over my body.

Philippe knew what came next. He stood, looking over the tips of the trees at the first signs of sunlight. “You’d better get.”

“You’d better get first.”

He nodded, then paused, grinning. When he bowed at the waist, as he’d done when I’d first met him in the shop, my stomach warmed again.

But then he began walking, down the road, out of my life. Or what I had of it until the sun arrived.

I began moving the other way, glancing over my shoulder once, only to find him looking back at me, too, still walking away, keeping his promise.

The foreign warmth in me wavered, making me wish he wouldn’t keep his vow, but I continued forward as the sun grew stronger. Then I ran the rest of the way toward the cabin, heading to a home for the first time in perhaps ever.

Heading toward my own destiny, whatever it might be.